We continued our Christmas celebration with a viewing of the gingerbread house display at the Prescott Resort. Various groups, schools and individuals in town build gingerbread creations to enter into this annual competition. The houses, towns and other structures are always amazing and creative.
This one was my favorite this year.
Our tradition each year is to make sugar cookies on Christmas Eve so that we have goodies to leave out for Santa. However, this year we were on the road to Utah on Christmas Eve so sugar cookie baking wasn't an option. To compensate, a few days before we left for our vacation the boys and I made gingerbread cookies, which freeze and travel well. We brought a large container full with us for all the kids to decorate on Christmas night. The boys, as always, had a blast rolling and cutting the cookies. I let them decorate a few later in the day for them to sample. Decorating with left over candy, sprinkles and frosting was even more fun than rolling and cutting the cookies.
I discovered this year that the library does an annual graham cracker house decorating activity. I immediately signed up the boys. We met our friends, Erin, Kaden, Abbey and Conner Daniels to share in the fun and sugar overdosing. The event was a little hectic but a fun Christmas outing.
We left for our 10 day trip to Utah on Friday, December 23. We spent the first night of our trip at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. We arrived late evening and when the kids and mom went to bed, Chad headed out for the evening with Mike Wadley. While we were sleeping, the alarm in the hotel went off for a very long time. Thankfully, when I called down to the front desk I learned it was a false alarm. It was nightmarish to think of hauling three sleeping children down countless flights of stairs. After who knows how long, the alarm finally stopped only to be followed up by an equally loud announcement advising everyone to go back to their room. Amazingly, none of the kids woke up. The next morning we were on the road early for the six hour drive to Salt Lake.
We arrived in the early afternoon, giving us enough time to enjoy a delicious Christmas Eve dinner of Honeybaked Ham and all the fixin's with Barbara, Brooke and Trent.
When we arrived, Brooke and Barbara were hard at work baking a delicious cranberry cake and citrus salad.
We carried on our regular Christmas Eve traditions of watching the Simpsons Christmas episode, sipping hot chocolate, reading Twas the Night Before Christmas and Luke 2 and setting out cookies and milk for Santa.
Christmas morning started at about 6:30 AM with the waking of Grant and Cole. Santa arrived with a bundle of presents and more were to come from mom, dad and Grandma.
Santa brought each boy a bottle of Salsa Lizano ("spicey sauce"). They love it for their rice.
Tyler took on Barry's role of wrapping paper wrestler this year, enjoying the paper more than the presents themselves.
The boys opened all of their gifts from mom and dad before we got ready for church.
At church we met up with Vance, Kim and their kids. After church, we took some family pictures then headed back to Grandma's house to open more gifts and enjoy an ebleskiver brunch.
This is the sign posted in Grandma's church parking lot. Only in Utah.
After the kids opened and played with their gifts and filled up on ebleskivers, they were getting restless. It was time to pull out the gingerbread cookies. Grant, Cole, Ellie and Brookie really enjoyed the activity. Little Vance wasn't really into it. We also enjoyed a buffet style Christmas dinner of turkey, potatoes and other delicious sides.
The recliner became the gathering place for playing the camera video games.
Christmas day ended late and exhausted. Grant snuggled up with the blow up penguin.
The day after Christmas I took the boys to Kaysville to visit my old friend Tiffany Mangum Thompson and her kids for the day. Chad spent the day with his family shopping and relaxing. When we joined back up in the evening, Chad took Grant and Cole swimming and I picked up the most enormous pizza I have ever seen. The boys loved it and thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Tuesday, we spent the morning relaxing and you can see that for the boys it meant cuddling in the recliner to take turns with the video games.
We finally put some plans together and headed to the Natural History Museum of Utah so that the boys could finally see the dinosaur bones they've been asking for, for many months. It was a fabulous museum. There were several floors but the dinosaur bone floor was by far the best and most intriguing. We wandered slowly through the bones marveling at how absolutely enormous the beasts were. Grant had fun trying out his new camera.
When we got back from the museum we started preparing for the annual fondue feast. Normally, fondue occurs on Christmas Eve but we wanted to all be together and we weren't going to see Vance and Kim until Christmas Day. Fondue was delicious. We used the big party room in Barbara's building. While the adults ate to the point of sick full, the kids played Wii and other games. It was impossible to tear them away from the games to get bites of food in their mouths.
To keep the fun rolling on this action packed day, we cleaned up fondue and went to enjoy the Christmas lights at Temple Square. It was freezing cold but it was so fun to watch the kids play and chatter while walking the grounds and taking in the lights.
On Wednesday, Barbara had to work so Brooke came with us to the ice skating rink to fulfill another one of Grant's wishes. It was quite an adventure. Cole put the skates on took two steps on the ice and headed right back to the bench to watch with Chad and Tyler. Brooke helped me drag Grant around the rink several times. He was a trooper for sure. He didn't give up, complain or cry. In fact, at one point I sent him off to go rest only to find him a few minutes later working himself around the rink, trying to keep his feet under him. More than once he said the ice was so slippery.
After skating we headed to the movies. I took the kids to Alvin & the Chipmunks, while Chad, Brooke and Barbara went to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. On our way to our theater we encountered these huge chipmunk statues that just begged to have their pictures taken. Our movie ended before the other movie so I walked the kids over to the free planetarium where they stared for a good 20 minutes at the 2-story ball maze.
Our 10 year anniversary was Thursday and Chad surprised me with a night away from the kids at the Monaco Hotel in downtown Salt Lake. Barbara and Brooke kept Tyler. The boys went to Lindon to stay the night with their cousins. It was a great anniversary. We ate dinner at Benihana. I was so full that after our 5:30 PM dinner I wasn't hungry again until 10:30 the next morning. After dinner we took a nice walk like we used to in our Chicago days. Of course, Chad ended up picking a hotel that actually allows pets and of course our room was right next door to a yappy little dog. Luckily, my phone call downstairs to the front desk ended the yapping. The hotel advertises animal print robes in every room. Chad couldn't resist modeling said robe.
Sadly, our anniversary celebration had to come to an end. We returned to reality late morning on Friday. We collected Tyler from Barbara and Brooke and headed out to Lindon to meet up with Grant and Cole. We spent the day with Vance and Kim and the kids. Chad and Vance took all the kids except Cole, Trenton and Tyler on a small hike to a waterfall. Grant got to shoot his first gun with Vance. It was a beebee gun of course but Grant loved it.
In the evening, I took the kids to the Ogden family get together titled "Betty's Gathering." It was a celebration organized by Teddy and some of my cousins to honor Grammie. Most of my cousins, aunts and uncles were there with a million kids running around. We enjoyed a great buffet and then a traditional Teddy gift raffle. I received a handbag. Grant received a remote control car and Cole received truck, boat and wave runner combo toy. It was fun to see so many of my cousins and other family members. We stayed out until about 10 PM. The kids were already exhausted from the week of fun and this pushed them over the top. They were worn out. We slept the night with Vance and Kim and then on New Years Eve went back to Barbara's to prepare for our celebration.
We were supposed to spent New Years Eve in Las Vegas with the Wadleys but shortly before we left for this trip we learned that they were having some additional family into town so there wasn't room for us to stay with them. It left us able to spend one more day with the Mellen family. Vance, Kim and the kids came to Barbara's for New Years Eve. We had all sorts of delicious food, including homemade gumbo and pecan pie from Vance, BBQ from a local restaurant and Brooke's famous queso and chips. We took the kids swimming and let them run wild with their toys and activities. We watched the ball drop at 10 PM, told the kids it was New Years and put them to bed. They were asleep before their heads even hit the pillow. I managed to stay up until midnight this year. Tyler woke up shortly before midnight as well. Barbara has an entire wall of windows in her condo that allowed us to see about seven different fireworks shows all over Salt Lake. I fell asleep on her bed while watching the fireworks and didn't wake up until morning. Somehow, someone took Tyler from me and I passed out.
While getting ready for bed, Grant started complaining he didn't feel well. I'm sure it was just pure exhaustion. He managed to get Grandma to snuggle him in the recliner for awhile before heading to bed. He loved every minute of that time with her.
Cole, as usual, complained of being hungry right before bed. He managed to con his way into a popsicle and frozen waffles from Grandma.
On New Years Day, we drove to Las Vegas to spend the night with the Wadleys. Brooke came with us so that she could see our home before we move from Prescott. (We learned a few days before we left for Salt Lake that Chad got the job in Flagstaff and that we needed to move at the beginning of February.) Their family had left so there was space for us. Mike took Chad and Brooke out on the town while KaySea and I stayed at home with the kiddos and went to bed early.
Monday, January 2, 2012, we arrived back in Prescott after a fabulous and exhausting 10 day vacation. I have never seen our children so exhausted. It is two weeks later and I'm still having to wake up the boys in the morning so that they will be ready for school on time. Normally, they're up before 6:30 AM. We see the Mellen cousins so rarely that it makes me happy to see how naturally they all click when they get together. It doesn't matter that it had been two years since their last visit with each other. They played as if they played with each other everyday. Grant and Cole both cried big tears when we had to say goodbye.
